The council’s action approved the first reading of the new ordinance, which will come up for a second reading during the regularly scheduled March 7 meeting, said Gary Saenz, city attorney.

During a late Wednesday night public hearing, several speakers urged the city to make business permits for dispensaries, cultivation facilities, testing labs and related businesses valid for a three-year time frame, not one as previously proposed.

But in part to align the city’s ordinance with state regulations, the council opted for a business permit that initially will be valid for a year, leaving open the option for multi-year permits to be issued in the future.

The fee for that permit will be determined later.

Majid Seraj, a Redlands-based biochemist and pharmacist, said Thursday that the one-year permit term alone will not be a deterrent to cannabis businesses seeking San Bernardino locations.

“It will really depend on how bureaucratic the renewal process is,” he said.

Seraj was among those arguing Wednesday night for a permit with a three-year term.

He is considering opening a facility that will make cannabis-based medical products for the wholesale market in San Bernardino.

“The one-year permit will add stress on businesses,” he said.

Ben Eilenberg, a Riverside-based cannabis industry consultant, said the proposed regulations “will certainly be challenged in court” and appeared to be a potential “backdoor ban” on the cannabis industry.

Specifically, he referred to a clause in the proposed ordinance that would allow the city manager to unilaterally change the regulations.

“The whole thing could be scrapped by the city manager,” Eilenberg said in an interview.

“This is not a bad ordinance,” Jim Penman, former long-time San Bernardino city attorney told the city council, shortly after Eilenberg spoke. “I think it will withstand a legal challenge.

Penman recommended that the city manager’s authority to make changes in the ordinance be tempered with language to say that any regulation changes be approved by the mayor and council.

The approved ordinance package does require mayor and council approval for rule changes.

The initial proposal before the council had in place an “honor system” for personal cultivation of cannabis within private residences.

In remarks to the council before the public hearing, Mark Persico, community development department director, said that the planning commission was concerned that any form of registration would trigger privacy concerns and fears of being targeted for residents seeking to grow up to six marijuana plants for personal use.

James Mulvihill, Ward 7 councilman, said he was not going to vote for an ordinance which has no permit requirements for the personal use grower.

Artificial light requirements and potentially other necessary electrical equipment for growing marijuana plants indoors will require electrical current demands which may exceed safe levels for much of San Bernardino’s older housing stock, he said.

As a result, at some point, there will be loss of life in residential fires ignited by electrical overload, he said.

The approved ordinance package includes a requirement that personal cultivation cannabis growers be required to fill out an online registration form.

Ordinance language was also modified to specify that the growing of more than six plants is a commercial enterprise in San Bernardino and governed by the much more stringent commercial growing regulations.

During the public hearing, William Cioci, a San Bernardino resident, told city council that the requirement that cannabis plants be grown inside a residence would prevent him from obtaining the chemical within the plant that helps his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

That chemical needs natural sunlight to be produced in quantity by the plant, said Cioci, 48, a Navy veteran.

Also, the requirement that growers contain marijuana plant orders will require an investment in filters which are cost-prohibitive for him and many other San Bernardino residents, said Cioci, who was accompanied to the podium by “Tangerine,” his therapy dog.

The city approved cannabis regulations require a buffer zone of 600-feet between homes and cannabis businesses unless there is an intervening barrier, such as a freeway, railroad track or flood control channel. The action doubled a proposed 300-foot cushion.

Tige Licato, a Lake Arrowhead resident and owner of Farm Fresh Medicinal Cannabis Delivery was among several speakers to argue that San Bernardino’s evolving policies were doing nothing to encourage the success of local business people to be among the future cannabis permit holders.

Under the regulations, public consumption is prohibited in buildings and places open to the public, such as farmers’ markets, parades, craft fairs and festivals.

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